1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing method and a printing apparatus for use in printing images on recording media.
2. Related Art
In one known printing technology, a reaction liquid is applied to a recording medium and then color-material-containing inks are applied to the reaction liquid. The reaction liquid causes the aggregation of the color materials, helping the fixing of these color materials to the recording medium. In another known printing technology, called a “background color precoat printing method,” a white ink for use in creating a background is applied to a recording medium and then color inks or other image forming inks are applied to areas of the recording medium which are coated with the white ink. If these technologies are combined, a reaction liquid is applied to a recording medium, then a white ink to the reaction liquid, and image forming inks to the white ink. In this case, a large quantity of white ink is applied to the entire surface of the recording medium in order to create the background of the image. Also, a large quantity of reaction liquid is applied in order to aggregate the white ink. Therefore, just before the image forming inks are applied, large quantities of liquids are present over the recording medium. If the image forming inks are applied to this recording medium, the image forming inks may bleed.
For example JP-A-2014-83789 describes a printing technology in which a reaction liquid is applied separately to a recording medium before a white ink is applied and before image forming inks are applied.
The technology described in JP-A-2014-83789 can decrease the quantity of the reaction liquid applied before the application of the image forming inks. However, a large quantity of reaction liquid is still needed, because the white ink is applied to the entire surface of the recording medium, in which case the image forming inks may also bleed.
The disadvantage described above commonly lies in printing technologies that use a background color ink containing a color material for a background, image forming inks for an image, and a reaction liquid. For example even if a printing method called a “background color postcoat printing method,” in which image forming inks are applied to a recording medium and then a background color ink is applied to areas of the recording medium which are coated with the image forming inks is employed, a similar disadvantage may also arise. More specifically, when almost an entire surface of the recording medium is coated with image forming inks or when image forming inks that involve using a large quantity of reaction liquid for aggregation is used, for example, the background color ink may bleed.